The idea of creating the Tsvetaev Museum was born in the city in the late 1980s, because Feodosia has always kept the memory of Marina and Anastasia Tsvetaevs. Preserved houses where the sisters lived, memorable places on the streets of the city, some documents in the funds of the museums of Feodosia. In 1998, a public council was organized to create a museum. At the same time the stock collection began to count down: two first exhibits were received from Feodosia donor T.P. Bolotskaya. The museum collection was intensively accumulated at the expense of donors from Ukraine (Feodosia, Simferopol, Kharkov, Kiev), Russia (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Alexandrov, Tarusa, Ivanovo), Germany, Czech Republic, USA, Israel. The Cultural Center «Marina Tsvetaeva House-Museum» in Moscow provided invaluable assistance in the creation of funds.
A complete miracle is the fact that the furniture from those rooms of the Redlikhov dacha, which was rented by Marina Tsvetaeva and her family, has been preserved. There are memories that Marina liked to rest in an armchair from this furniture set.
The handle from the gate leading to the courtyard of the house where Anastasia Tsvetaeva and her son lived and the stereoscope belonging to the photographer E. M. Redlich, which was often used by Asya Tsvetaeva, who was fond of photography at that time, have been preserved.
At the end of 2000 Museum of Marina and Anastasia Tsvetaev was established as part of the Koktebel Republican Ecological-Historical-Cultural Reserve «Kimmeria M. A. Voloshin», and in 2003 the museum was allocated part of the house number 13 on V. Korobkova Street (at the corner of the former Military and Bulvar). The choice of the premises for the museum’s exposition was not accidental: Anastasia Tsvetaeva and her son Andrey rented accommodation in this house from October 1913 to June 1914. At the same time Marina, her husband and daughter settled at the Redlikhov dacha on the former Annenskaya Street (now 14 Schmidt Street). The sisters successfully performed at evenings and concerts of poetry and music, were active participants in charitable events in Feodosia. Here, in Feodosia, Marina Tsvetaeva wrote one of her best lyric poems «Above Feodosia faded…».
The Feodosia-Koktebel period of Marina’s work was unusually fruitful and ended in 1914 with the creation of the book «Youthful Poems», published only in 1976.
The exposition of the museum is called «Feodosia of Marina and Anastasia Tsvetaevs» and reflects the Feodosia-Koktebel period of their life before the First World War, which «destroyed the Crimean idyll» and affected the fate of the whole generation. The exhibition presents materials from the funds of the Feodosia Museum of Marina and Anastasia Tsvetaevs, the House-Museum of M. A. Voloshin, the National Picture Gallery named after I. K. Aivazovsky, the National Gallery of Art. Aivazovsky, Feodosia Museum of Antiquities, as well as personal collections. Letters and notebooks in which Marina Tsvetaeva shared her impressions of Feodosia in those years have been preserved.
Feodosia cherishes the memory of Marina and Anastasia Tsvetaeva.